Bad smell in toilet is known to come from urine and fecal matter. Virus such as SARS and bacteria can be transmitted from such excreta to air. When urine is streaming to the wall of urinal, splashing and splitting of urine may be caused, and then small urine droplets and vapor are generated. Some urine droplets will leave the urinal and suspend in air. In addition, such urine and fecal matter cause nuisance odor and pollute toilet environment. Moreover, it is known that droplets and air are always good carriers of odor, bacteria and virus, which can transmit disease. It raises more concern of disease transmission especially in the toilet of infectious disease ward.
Various methods and apparatus have been proposed for deodorization and disinfection of air in toilet but they have their own limitations and disadvantages respectively.
For examples, the inventions disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,003,157 and 7,461,410, use a ventilation system to extract contaminated air from toilet bowl and discharge them through air duct to atmosphere. Nevertheless, contaminated air with bacteria or virus is not treated instead of just transferring it to other areas, and eventually, disease will be transmitted.
Other systems use ventilation device to draw contaminated air into an adsorbent filter like activated carbon filter so that air contaminants are adsorbed on the surface of adsorbent materials. However, the adsorption efficiency will be decreased by water droplets and vapor. The adsorbent filter can also serve as a suitable environment for growth and reproduction of bacteria due to high humidity and presence of organic nutrients that leads to secondary pollution.
Most patents, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,991,934 and 7,165,274, focus mainly on gaseous contaminants but is not effective in water droplet extraction, which play even a more important role in this infectious problem.
A toilet seat generating ions to oxidize odor is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 6,785,912. However, it is believed that the oxidation rate between ions and odor is low. In addition, the excessive ions may be harmful to human.
Therefore, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the art to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.